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mhm Yeah. Mm hmm. So what? Mhm. Mhm. Amen. Mm hmm. First of all I'd like to welcome all of you to the three days of the ecology and population. I hope that everyone here would enjoy and get the best possible education and learning experience out

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of the three days that we have coming to us now, I'd like to introduce Jim Harding, co chairman of the student committee. We feel that we have generated one of the most sophisticated programs of this type in the nation to permit another three days of this

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type. It is up to you to each of you to give it life with this. I would like to present Mr David brower, Friends of the Earth direct, excuse me, President of Friends of the Earth and director of the john muir institute. He is a former

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executive, the former executive director of the Cr club. David brower. Thank you. Jim Sherry, mr Robinson. Friends and others. One of the things that I'd like to do today is just try to put a perspective on the ecological crisis why we're in the trouble you're reading

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about every day you pick up a paper or a magazine, we're still operating in what has been called a cowboy economy where there was just an assumption all along that the resources were unlimited. But we know darn well that it isn't a cowboy economy that's possible

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anymore. We're in a spaceship. We learned that last year and no sooner and we can't continue to do what we've done. There's no way out. We've got to worry about what happens to our own atmosphere as we burn more and more of the fossil fuel. It's

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worth bearing in mind, but the only reason we have oxygen in our atmosphere at all is that there are fossil fuels unburned. I thought for a while that simply all you needed was green plants and we breathe out the carbon dioxide and the plants take that

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and split it up and give you oxygen and that's for free. But every plant in its death and decay requires every bit of oxygen back that it liberated. Whether it's burned or whether it disappears in the in those slow smokeless fires of decay, every molecule of

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oxygen goes back to the plant unless the plant was buried before. It could claim that oxygen and a great many plants were, and they have become part of the fossil fuel resource in the world. To the extent that we hurry debate to burn those now and

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to give them their oxygen, we impede our own use of oxygen and all other mammals on earth. So perhaps we should slow down there. I'm gonna take a little bit of the element sulfur burns a bit of it. Uh sulfur dioxide will react with this purple

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solution called potassium permanganate and change it into uh a rather colorless assumption. Okay, alright. I'm gonna take then a known number of drops of this potassium permanganate solution and put it into the water. I'm going to take one two, three, four software. I'm sure you could

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smell it. I left the room very long. Yeah, well, just okay. I think again, and we come to the same conclusions. We held our breath longer this time because the accumulation of waste in your body to uh, get to a higher level and your heart increase

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its pace to compensate to get rid of those ways. Everybody here felt that effect or in some sense. And I think everybody, if you're really concerned, you'd go out and work some way to, you know, it isn't necessary that men live in an environment in which

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the air is absolutely devoid of all possible problems. Uh, This may be the ideal situation and as time goes on, taking into account the technology of 50, 100 or 250 years from now. You know, when you stop to think of the progress we've made since 1900

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to date A period of 69 years And then think of what can happen in another 50 years from now or half that time. And that really is staggering. Might we not say that profit is not an absolute right? That that life is an absolute life absolute

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right. And anything that is done by an industry government and army that interferes with this absolute right to life must be stopped. We've had statues like that for hundreds of years, you have the pure food laws which have been on the statute books for years. They're

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being run by people from the industry. You can look for instance, at the legislation about the shell strips in which the people who were in charge of in charge of regulating whether these things were dangerous or not go to work for shelf. You know, as well

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as I do how the Pure food and drug act is carried out. Why aren't you putting more stringent regulations on industry? Because they're the ones who are wrecking our, as I just pointed out to your industry is a part of this. 15 to 20% of the

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cause of air pollution. We have Now, wait a minute. We do have on the statute books now we have the air pollution control district, They have reduced the amount of emissions that doesn't make any difference. Do you think that because the law was passed in 1895,

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it's necessary we adopted. I also want to know how come industry is allowed to get away with cheap devices that kind of ignored the whole issue. But I don't know of any industry that's been allowed to get away with anything of the kind. I don't think.

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Well, what about what about the type of affair where if large stacks are put together and make a plume and that's ignored. Even if it is black. That is merely a measuring factor. And that isn't the problem. The problem is an analysis of what comes out

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of the stack. The restrictions are to the point of of stopping anything from coming out of that stack which is within the present technological ability to stop. But this is a part of the problem of trying to control these things. You don't come up with answers

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overnight. I think part of the problem is legislators. Arnolds aren't attuned to the problems, aren't doing anything. How many bills have you sponsored in the Senate and how many of you pushed relating the environment relating to ecology? That isn't the test? As long as there are

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bills introduced that I can support, it isn't necessary for me or every other center due to to put in 40 duplicating bills. So that's a simple answer to the situation being done. But it's hard to get them to do anything about it in Washington D. C.

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You can see that they just sit there and talk. I've been through at least five of them completely. And I sat there and didn't say anything, anybody can say what they're saying. It's just that they're not doing anything and they just sit here because they're getting

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paid. Big business has has has really a massive control of the government. How can you expect the government to move against big business? Obviously the government laws and the laws are really not strong enough because take Boise cascade in these large companies, they go up and

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they told if you ruin any more trees, we're going to find you $10,000. But by ruining trees, they're going to make another 200 $300,000 by, by selling things. And these lodges aren't strong enough. They have to be told if they do this, your your business is

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going to be taken away from you or something. The laws aren't strong enough. And these people that are making the laws are the people that are now going out and saying we're on an environment trip. But you know, they're making the laws, they're controlling the government.

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It's just like a circle there. You know what they're doing is completely controlled by a few guys up in the top. What is called the military industrial complex? But you can't go against these companies because the companies in the country, all these big companies don't, don't,

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don't don't products don't don't don't support the company. What are you going to use to drive it? They have control of the country. They know that they are the only people who are making these products, They know that these people have to patronize them. What are

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you going to do if you don't eat their products? What are you going to eat if you don't buy their cars? What are you, what are you going to drive right ahead if product or performance defective? Good housekeeping, guaranteed replacements are rebound to consumers. Oh, mm

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hmm. MS Rolfe is Detective, I want that money back. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, Oh, Oh, hey, ladies lady, hey lady, ever hear of a talking pigeon, That's all that bring your fetus in the park. It's got chemicals in it.

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Look calcium propane. The people that are making all the money. The people are parents who are obviously at the moment making all the money. They are involved in this. Half of our fathers work at Lockheed or or Transamerica Tequila patron or something. You see they are

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part of this. You will be the scientist and you will be the engineer and you will be the businessman and you will be the consumer. And you were going to cause this upset to the environment. Unless starting now you consciously decide not to. It won't happen

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accidentally. You must make up your mind that you are not going to be one of those. It happened in America not so long ago we had taken all that. We organized the blue coats and red coats and we made the

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changes. Now. The parties have different nations have been in that situation and the whole world is giving us. Thank you. You may all recognize this as the peace symbol but it can also stand for the two child family. Alright. Peace. Peace. And

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the two child family may actually be synonymous. Who knows if every student says I'm not going to have more than two Children. Then within five years the population growth curve will begin to drop. So the future is in our hands in a very, very real sense

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this way And the responsibility for guaranteeing heating of future in that sense, in the sense that we can control our reproduction is on our shoulders. And if we want a future, what's got to change is our heads and the way we live. And this is by

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far more difficult. Most of these people have decided but they don't want any kids of their own that takes quite a bit of love and sacrifice, but they do want to control yours. Now my question is, are you going to let them? Yes, I'm talking to

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you kids out there and I'm just talking as a mother. We are our brother's keepers, as long as God is our father. But if we take over his jurisdiction and start molding man to our own selfish interests, we will most certainly be destroyed in the process.

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I could go on and on about Marxist communes in china and Russia and Israel where Children are taken from their parents at two months and brainwashed by tv and radio control programming day after day until they become little robots who don't really live. They exist. Now

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listen to this and remember that these people are bragging about these socialist creations. Your primary species in your talk was that the greatest danger to Christianity the world etcetera Is communism okay if if communism is the cause of such as as you say under production of

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food uh etcetera like that. People controlling population. Why is it that the United States with which has the richest economy in the country the greatest amount of arable land still has 30 million people that go hungry and China a communist country with 800 million people whose

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population has doubled in the last 40 years. And who's who's less than 20% of the land is arable can feed all of our Children. How do you you mean you would rather trade places with them? Huh? Now we have Okay, okay. We we have been we

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have been we have been sending them all kinds of food all over the world. Right. Well, uh Canada Canada has been keeping Canada has been keeping china pretty well equipped. I agree though, that we should be doing a great deal more. I don't think it's right

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that anybody should starve to death when we've got the means to feed the whole to feed everybody. Really. I don't I don't agree. I don't think the economy should have a thing to do with letting people starve to death. I agree with you on that. I

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think it's a since it seems to me unfortunate that most of the talk about pollution and nature is about nature and pollution because the trouble that we face an ecological sense is not biological but societal that is to say we have to talk much more about

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the nature of society and man and much less about nature and pollution. And I don't think it's an accident that the government and the press focused on the biological parts and failed to address the societal aspects. That is to say, what kind of a society is

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it that's organized to promote things like the war, To promote the SST the offshore oil drilling. It consumes 7% of the world's resources. This consumes 70% of the world's resources, with only 7% of the world's population. I mean, another way of putting that is that our

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relationship to nature is no longer a function of natural processes, but is the rule of political management. Everything about the life support systems on this earth is now determined on a scale beyond our normal comprehension by political management. The fact that people talk about ecology is

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an issue which students can be creative, which they can do things contrary to the anti war demonstrations and contrary to the campus demonstrations. Seems to me an exerted effort by politicians to move the student protests away from the war and away from racism and away from

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poverty to something that's passive just something they can pacify, like the ecology movement And that I think is a great danger of what's happening. And that's what I see the April 22 movement to be all about. It seems to be that people in this country have

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only attention for one thing at a time. They can only look at one problem like the war and get involved in that they can't look at a whole lot of things. And so when Nixon talks about ecology, he wants everyone to start talking about ecology and

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to think about him and his programs so that they'll forget about what the program's really are and what you have to give up to. The crisis in ecology is really nothing more than a crisis in the entire society. You know, the monotony of our environment is

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the same monotony of the schools of our ways of taste are ways of communication. The fact that san Francisco is becoming much more like Manhattan every day. It's all the same situation right now with the way politics and general public feeling is in the United States.

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I don't think we can just raise up a force um say similar to the san Francisco state thing and just demand these things because that's simply going to turn off more people than it would turn on and we have to get in touch with those people.

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All we can do is try and work within the government and reform the government from the inside. The reason like you can't work through the channels anymore is they've been so clouded up and they've been so destroyed and they're so sick that nothing can be done

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to cure them. So the only alternative is to make new, I remember when when when with with last year mr Rogers, we worked through the system and we were almost told, I think the system. people are told, oh, you know, we agree with you, you know,

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by the people in the system? I think they agreed basically we were right but still, you know, what good did that do? It was just very you look you lose and you get very, very discouraged. The system is bad and it's not our system of democracy,

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it's it's just it's been corrupt and coerced by people. You don't blame the laws in the system, so the laws are bad but they must be changed. But the people that make the government basic people in this country, they aren't corrupt. It's the people that seem

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to be in the government, they get elected through like, you know, saying things and they're not doing them cannot be deceived by these people who live through their campaigns. This type of deceiving and this type of dishonest coop, of course people who are run by these

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people are running our government, we have to get these people out, get people into our honest are going to serve the people and work for the people's needs and people get all the people together or you can just get a minority and then you can publicize

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that one minority and you can finally get a majority. And if 50 of you act in this way, they'll think it's a movement, that's what it is. 50 concerned citizens in the community all agreeing on one action on behalf of the environment that is a movement

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within that community. Other things you can do, which are, are they're Gandhi in the sense of blocking the railroad track. Um, how about returning no deposit, no return bottles in quantity of a little story like University Avenue. He owes his income to the people who come

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in and buy things. He doesn't, he doesn't really directly transferred to the guy ahead of him. He's responsible to the people there. So they stopped buying his products and he starts going bankrupt. He's going to do what they want to know what the man on top

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one. But in actuality, you don't really hit him first. You hit the people first because you have to get the support of the people and 50 communities can make a city and 50 cities can make a state and 50 states make us. And that's as far

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as we have to go. I think a lot of us are like assuming that most of the people in the United States will forget about business people and political people, just the people in the United States are basically, you know, like liberal and they want to

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change the system and things like this. But you don't seem to realize that I would say 60 or more percent of the people in this country are very conservative and they, you know, they don't want any changes. They don't like hippies. They don't like long hair

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if you've ever traveled through the country and many people know this? But you see, you have to, you know, you're going to have to deal with the people in this country and change them. Before you talk about changing the system. We've got to make them realize

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you've got to show them some different things that they've never seen that, that that the system is not working out their values, their their mores, everything is detrimental and can kill them. We must show the people that they are polluting their hair. They're eating the wrong

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kind of foods. There are they're overpopulated having two big families and we have to show people to education to environmental awareness programs, to show people that it's wrong. And then when you show people is wrong, then they'll become aware and then they'll change. It's not an

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overnight process. I mean, the building of that constituency began with the people's park along ecological lines. You know, I think that that sentiment is growing the mistake that we make at this time is in lending credence and lending authority to things like the nation state, to

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the electoral process, to competitive social systems which are completely antithetical to nature. And when you say talk about changing the United States Government, you talk about rationalizing, making it operate better. I think that the precondition for an ecologically sound world, is the abolition of the United

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States Government and the forces that operates throughout the world? Well, what would, what would you suggest as a replacement for it? What I would suggest is the direction, you know, I don't know, the forum in that direction would begin to talk about the scale of social

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organization, which is compatible with the regional life support system that would talk about decentralized forms of government and about neighborhood about decentralized and diversified energy sources. I just don't think, you know, you have any guarantee whatsoever that, you know, if you're going to just break down

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one, you're gonna have some wherever there's a revolution, you know, it's meant to change things for the better right, any revolution, therefore you have to go in. I mean, you have to base what you're doing on ideals and what you want, and, you know, you're gonna

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have to try it sometime. Yeah, but you're gonna just break down one system. You know, I'm not sure what you're gonna do anything for it. That's the point. What I'm, what I'm trying to point out is you're gonna just change it without, you know, just changing

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the sign of the organization, it's just, I think it's just But when that system, you know, not catering to you or, you know, it's doing you in and you're gonna want to change and just, you know, you're gonna have to hope for hope that what you

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want, you know, you can do, putting something better actually revolutionaries threatened me, They threatened me because they may be right. I do agree that our present system must change and it's going to have to change very, very drastically. But I don't believe we can wait around

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for the revolutionaries to group forces and make it happen. And deep down inside, I think I can succeed within this system. The success depends intimately on you alone as an individual. Your actions and your attitudes when you're running this country, there does not have to be

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a generation gap for God's sake. Don't lose your idealism and your faith in yourself and your marvelous feelings for what's right through the brainwashing action of a career. I I've spent this entire talk discussing man and making the world fit for

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man. In fact, this entire conference in the UNESCO Conference in the 1970 U.N. Conference are all going to be on man and his environment. And yet I want you to look at Oscar, my friend here. We can measure our success by assuring the continued presence not

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just of man but of Oscar and of other possums and the birds and the whole gamut of natural diversity that we now have on this planet. If you think we have to destroy natural diversity and kill off the wildlife in order to survive those who follow

00:27:26.370 - 00:27:49.010

you on this planet, we'll find out through ecological disaster and through living lives that may not be worth living. That you were wrong. And then it's going to be too late. Let Oscar live and we let people live as well. Thank you. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

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Now that these facts are brought out. It's really strange. You noticed that you really notice it like you've never noticed it before the day. It wasn't blue. It was great. It was just really sick and brown. It was awful. I was just driving by Leslie Salt.

00:28:07.230 - 00:28:22.470

All you see the smoke and the whole bay areas. It's really sick. I mean when the facts are brought out, you noticed it like these things are real. Like, you know, we've always heard them. We've always heard, well we're running out of food overpopulated. But like

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I've really gotten frightened these three days and I said, man, it's really real.